When will you startups learn? Single founder companies can't succeed.
badness=true
badness=true
One person can go only so far (not that this is by any means insignificant e.g. PlentyOfFish apparently serves millions of uniques and earns US$10,000 per day with a staff of one). "Singles" will inevitably hit a glass ceiling where they will need more resources if they want to break through.
The secret to continuing your initial success is ensuring that these additional resources can leverage off your initial good work AND add value of their own in excess of the complexity added/strain they place on you and your new "organisation". Far easier said than done.
Nice work on the site and app! Congrats!
I worked at a software company which has 5 buildings it owns outright, employs thousands of people, and has 300 million+ in annual revenue. In the 70's it was started by one person. I'd have called it a "startup" at the time. It is still private.
The difference perhaps revolves around "startup appropriate for Y Combinator" vs "startup."
Actually, it would be "startup appropriate for any investor". If there is no exit planned, then it's not something an investor wants to be involved in.
It's purely semantics, which is why I specifically said, "according to pg's definition". Your definition may be different...but if you're talking about pg's rules of thumb for "startups", you have to accept his definition of "startup" for the purpose of context.
There are all sorts of investment that don't fit the Silicon Valley VC short-term mold, so appropriate for "any investor" might be over-stating things, even for startups. Investing in cash-cow businesses is not a bad strategy--I wish I could have invested in the private company I mentioned above in the 70's. Jeff Bezos thought 37 signals was interesting enough to invest in. Warren Buffett seems to like cash cow businesses as well.
Buy and hold anyone?
I ran a startup for 7 years, was very successful, but as a single founder, I understand fully the problems and concerns of PG et al. My biz (electronic products design/manufacturing/distribution) was very demanding, maybe / (shouldbe) a software company will be less so. In which case the rules change?
Im hoping....
YC funds single founders all the time. There were several in our batch.